


Postcards from the Edges of the Earth

by burglebezzlement



Category: Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated (TV 2010)
Genre: Canon Era, F/F, Gatorsburg, Get Together, On the Run, Postcards, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-10 19:12:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8930392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: After Marcie gives Velma the fifth piece of the Planispheric Disk, she goes on the run.She doesn’t want Velma to worry.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Metal_Chocobo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metal_Chocobo/gifts).



> Takes place during canon, between Marcie going on the run after The Night on Haunted Mountain and Velma getting in touch with Marcie at some point prior to The Wrath of the Krampus.
> 
> Happy Yuletide!

FRONT OF CARD: Several penguins standing on an ice floe.

BACK OF CARD: Hey V — made it down to the South Pole! The research programs here are off the hook — you wouldn’t believe what they’re doing with super-chilled gas these days.

Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. M.

* * *

Velma finds the card when she goes to check the mail after school. She smiles when she sees it. Marcie shouldn’t be taking the risk, not for Velma, but… Velma’s really glad she knows that Marcie’s okay.

* * *

FRONT OF CARD: Two carved stone legs sticking out of a vast, sandy desert under an unforgiving sun. 

BACK OF CARD: Life tip for you, V: Never get in a fight with a camel. You will not win and the camel will spit at you. M.

* * *

Marcie doesn’t let herself stay to watch Velma pick up her cards.

She’s always been a talented forger, and she knows her postcards are convincing. Almost like the real deal. With her postmarks and fake postage stamps, with the ways she buffs the edges of the cards and her convincing water damage, they look like they really are coming from halfway around the world. She could probably just slip them into the mailman’s bag. 

But that wouldn’t let her check Velma’s house. Disguising herself and dropping a card in Velma’s mailbox is the closest Marcie will let herself come to seeing Velma. No hiding in the bushes to see Velma, even if she really really wants to. 

Anyway, it’s Crystal Cove. Someone else is probably watching from the bushes already.

* * *

FRONT OF CARD: Kangaroo standing in a field.

BACK OF CARD: G’day from Down Under, mate! Went for a stay in the bush and ended up busting a kangaroo rustling ring. Here’s to women trapping rustlers for themselves! M.

* * *

Velma looks out the front window, into the dark. “Mom?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“What time does the mail usually come?”

“Right around lunchtime, dear. Why do you ask?”

Velma frowns at the postcard in her hand. “No reason.”

* * *

FRONT OF CARD: Jagged mountains in front of a blue sky. 

BACK OF CARD: Greetings from Patagonia! I’ve been perfecting my flying routine in front of the peaks. Beautiful here. Hope all’s well in the Cove. M.

* * *

Marcie’s hiding out in Gatorsburg this week. With the gator counterfeiting gang still in jail after Mystery Incorporated busted them, there’s nobody living in town. Marcie has her pick of hiding places — an abandoned gas station, an abandoned hotel, an abandoned gator factory — what more could a girl ask for?

 _A friend,_ Marcie thinks, glumly, looking down at her fifth dinner of canned gator meat since she got to Gatorsburg. _But I’m not going to think about that. I have to keep V safe._

She pushes the gator-emblazoned plate away and pulls her laptop towards herself to start looking up postmarks. It’s a good thing she brought her professional postcard printing machine on the run with her.

* * *

FRONT OF CARD: Thatch-roofed huts on stilts over a tropical sea. 

BACK OF CARD: Hey, V — dropping a line from an island I’m not going to name, in case our old boss is watching. It's such a small island, the art thief I was chasing didn’t have anywhere to run except off a pier! Got any tips for getting seawater out of a Gauguin? M.

* * *

If there’s one thing Velma loves, and one thing Velma hates, it’s a mystery.

She goes to the air vent in her room and unscrews the cover plate to retrieve the stack of Marcie's postcards she hid inside.

They just don’t make _sense_. Velma’s been tracking the pattern, and it’s steady — not irregular, like it should be if the postcards really are coming from across the world, from Stonehenge and Bora Bora and Istanbul. The postmarks are all in the same order she got the cards in, but shouldn’t a postcard coming from somewhere further away take longer to arrive? 

She brings the postcards over to her computer and pulls up one of her mystery maps. This mystery map will be big.  
   
As big as the whole world.

* * *

FRONT OF CARD: A picture of an ice-covered sea with a light glowing on the horizon.

BACK OF CARD: Hey, V. Just wrapped up a mystery in northern Canada. I’ve now visited both poles! Came across a man posing as Santa Claus to try to hide his drilling activities in a wildlife sanctuary. My sting operation took him down, but let’s just say I’m never disguising myself as an elf again. STAY SAFE — M.

* * *

Velma stares at her map and decides that she’s on to something. 

The dates the postcards arrived, the dates the postcards were mailed, the distances between the locations Marcie says she’s been — there’s no way they make sense. Maybe Marcie could have made it from Aukland to the North Pole in three days, but even if she did, there’s no way she could have run a Santa sting in the time left over. 

And then there’s the mail deliveries. Thanks to Mystery Incorporated’s work with the new Mayor of Crystal Cove, Velma knows that the Dinkley’s mailman was attacked by a crooked real estate developer posing as a werewolf last Thursday and didn’t deliver any of the mail on the second half of his route. Only when Velma checked the mail Thursday afternoon, she still found a postcard from Mt. Kilamanjaro. What are the odds of that?

The longest she’s ever gone without getting a postcard is four days, which Velma figures means one’s going to be dropped off today.

Velma tells her mom she’s sick so she can stay home from school. Once Mrs. Dinkley has headed off for a long day of showing tourists around the mysteries of Crystal Cove, Velma gets out of bed and sets up a watching post by the front door. Nobody can see her from the street. It’s perfect.

Almost four hours later, after Velma’s legs have cramped up and she’s had to set her phone to play her a podcast on super-cooled gas research to keep herself awake, there’s finally motion out front. Velma’s never seen the weedy-looking guy standing at the end of their driveway, but while she watches, he slips a postcard into the mailbox.

 _Gotcha,_ Velma thinks. She runs out the back of the house and comes around through the neighbors’ yard to confront him. 

When she grabs the guy by his upper arm, he doesn’t try to run. Up close, she can see that he’s got violet eyes.

 _Wait a minute,_ Velma thinks. Violet eyes. And now that she thinks about it, she can smell —

“Marcie?” She puts a hand to the guy’s hair and pulls. 

Marcie’s mask comes off in her hand.

* * *

The first time Marcie got unmasked by Velma, she got hauled off to jail. The second time, Velma let her go free.

This time, Velma hugs Marcie, so hard Marcie has a hard time breathing for a moment or two.

“I missed you,” Velma says, once she finally lets Marcie go. “What were you thinking? E’s going to see you.”

Marcie pulls her glasses out of her pocket and puts them on. “You let me worry about E.”

“Come inside,” Velma says, and she grabs Marcie’s hand. 

The air inside the Dinkleys’ house is cool on Marcie’s sweaty face. She’s never gotten the hang of wearing a mask, of keeping herself in a disguise. Velma sees her wipe the sweat off her forehead and goes to get her a glass of lemonade and a napkin.

“It’s good to see you,” Velma says, once Marcie’s sitting down.

After weeks of hiding out in abandoned mines and gator factories and closed tourist traps, staying one step ahead of Mr. E, sitting in the Dinkley’s living room and drinking lemonade feels surreal. Like she’s in a play.

“It’s good to see you too, V.” Marcie pushes her glasses up her nose. “How’s the gang?”

Velma doesn’t answer. Instead, she stands in front of Marcie.

“I’m still sorry,” she says. “I didn’t want that.”

“Hey.” Marcie shakes her head. “I get it.”

“You don’t,” Velma says, with a fierceness that Marcie hasn’t heard from her before. “I didn’t want that. I fought for you.”

Marcie can’t think of anything to say, and the silence hangs between them, thick and awkward in the cool of the air-conditioned living room. 

“I still want you to stay,” Velma says. She lets out a breath and sits down beside Marcie on the couch, facing her. “It’s not safe here and E is looking for you and I totally want you to stay, because I’m the worst friend ever.”

“It’s okay,” Marcie says, again, and when Velma shakes her head again, Marcie brings her hand up to Velma’s face.

The soft skin of Velma’s cheek under her fingers — it’s electric like the time Marcie forgot to tag out the neon transformer and zapped herself. Like the swoop in her stomach the first time she tried the super-helium and floated up into the sky. 

“V —”

But Velma’s there, leaning in, leading Marcie the way she did through all their science fair competitions, the way she did while they were working for Mr. E together over the summer, the way she did when she decided that Marcie was going to be her friend. She brushes her fingers across Marcie's cheek (and oh, it’s sweaty, and Marcie wants to tell her no and yes please at the same time) and she pushes Marcie's hair back, and then Velma’s lips are on Marcie’s, and Marcie, whose brain usually doesn’t shut up, can’t think. 

She kisses Velma back, desperately, her fingers skimming Velma’s neck under her turtleneck. Marcie's thinking about nothing but the fact that Velma’s lips are on hers. Like she deserves to be here. Like she deserves someone like Velma in her life. 

“I wanted you to stay,” Velma says, when they finally separate.

Marcie pushes her glasses back up her nose, holding on to herself, trying not to let herself hope for this. “Maybe we don’t get what we want.”

“So stay now,” Velma says. “Just for a little while. I know you have to go on the run again, but… maybe just for today?”

Marcie thinks about it. Her only appointment today was breaking into an abandoned frozen yoghurt shop, and she can always do that tonight. Or tomorrow. Or any time. It’s not like she made an appointment with the rats who are probably running the place.

What if Marcie let herself pretend she was from another Crystal Cove? A Crystal Cove where whatever cursed treasure hidden by the Planispheric Disk never got hidden beneath the town. A kinder, gentler Crystal Cove, where she and Velma grew up as science fair partners, not science fair rivals.

Velma gets up and tugs at Marcie’s hand. “Come on,” she says.

Marcie gives in and nods. Wherever Velma leads, she’ll follow.


End file.
